Sorry about the delayed post. We’re consumed with software polishing at the moment and there’s not much time for anything else.
Continuing with the lathe lock, I cut 3″ from a 1/4″ brass rod, grabbed that in a Jacobs chuck, and polished it. I start polishing with sandpaper (grit depends upon existing scratches—usually #220 is good to start) up to #2000, then metal polish. My long-time favorite is Mothers, which leaves a beautiful polish. I then sanded (with #120) the part of the brass to be glued into the handle (to give the glue something to hang on to), mounted the rod on the tailstock in a collet chuck, and glued it in. Mounting the rod instead of just shoving it in by hand insured good alignment—important for the next steps. I also glued a scrap block to the bottom of the handle.
Waste block glued in place.
The scrap block let me stabilize the piece with a live center while I turned off most of the waste from the butt of the handle. After all, the rod I’m holding by is brass, and not very thick. It wouldn’t stand up to a lot of punishment. If I’d omitted the scrap block, I’d have had a small hole in the end of the piece, which would require further turning.
Here you see most of the turning complete. The work exposed more voids, which I again filled with the mixture of padauk wood dust and epoxy. That’s the shiny goop you see on the right end.
The finished product
The final step is finishing, and here a problem arose. I wanted to use a CA/BLO finish for durability, and I’d forgotten how much heat that finish generates. As I put the first coat on and it cured, the cone started to open up from the heat! As soon as I heard the first “pop”, I knew what was happening and shut things down. I let that coat of finish cure, sanded it lightly, then did the rest with a spray can of lacquer. I got a shiny, hard finish with no more heat problems.
Cones are interesting to turn, and they produce fascinating patterns. If you need a small handle, knob, or pen, give them a try.
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